Aggressors may impose strict control over all forms of public expression, book printing, and mass media. Banning the publication of literature without the sanction of appointed censors, filtering information, and repressing independent authors allow the colonizer to monopolize the information space. This prevents the spread of dissent and ensures that the aggressor's state ideology is imposed on the colonized society without alternative.
The introduction of censorship control over Ukrainian book printing. Patriarch Joachim banned publications without his sanction and sent a reprimand for publishing books without prior permission[1][2], and in 1690 "the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the 'new Kyivan books' of Petro Mohyla, Kyrylo Stavrovetsky, Ioanykii Galiatovsky, Sylvestr Kosov, Lazar Baranovych, and others, laying on them a curse and anathema"[3].
The introduction of censorship over book printing by Peter I's decree of 5 October 1720: "no new books whatsoever are to be printed except previous church editions, and even those old church books… are to be corrected before printing"[4].
The closure of the national press: the Ukrainian socio-political and literary journal "Osnova" (St. Petersburg, January 1861 - October 1862) came to an end: the plans to reorganize the publication were thwarted by the minister of internal affairs Valuev, who refused to sanction its publication under a renewed program[5].
The censor's refusal to consider national manuscripts: "On a Ukrainian grammar prepared in Russian, the censor wrote the resolution: 'It would be naive to hope for permission to print the grammar of a language that must not exist'"[6].
Total censorship of translations and book imports: in 1892 the Main Administration for Press Affairs directed the censorship committee to suppress translations into Ukrainian, "reducing the number of such talentless works for purely state purposes"[7]; "The ban on importing Ukrainian books from abroad was confirmed in the harshest form in 1894"[6].
The purge of the information space: Nicholas II's personal decree of 20 July 1914 on military censorship gave the command the right "to forbid for a set term, by their own authority and within the locality subordinate to them, any assemblies whatsoever, and to suspend periodical publications, as well as the transmission of postal items and telegrams"[8]. On this basis the military administration of the Kyiv military district that very day closed the only Ukrainian daily newspaper, "Rada," and confiscated at the printing house the print runs of "Svitlo" and of the "Literary-Scientific Herald," and on 9 January 1915 all Ukrainian periodicals were shut down[9].
On 18 November 1919 the Whites' city administration in Mykolaiv ordered preliminary censorship of printed publications[12]. So it was in Kyiv as well: an order of general Mai-Maevsky, head of the Whites' administration, subjected all publications to military censorship - publishing only with the governor's permission, with every issue presented to the prosecutor[13].
Mass confiscation and destruction of literature declared "nationalist," and rigid control over the printed word and the arts[14].
Total ideological control over art and the press, the banning of works and the vilification of writers for alleged "bourgeois nationalism." The campaign culminated in the verdict in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee: "on July 18, 1952 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court passed death sentences on 13 people, including 5 natives of Ukraine, well-known Jewish writers and poets"[15].
The immediate elimination of the independent press: GKChP resolution No. 2 of 19 August 1991 ordered "to temporarily limit the list of published central, Moscow city, and oblast socio-political editions to the following newspapers: 'Trud,' 'Rabochaya tribuna,' 'Izvestia,' 'Pravda,' 'Krasnaya zvezda,' 'Sovetskaya Rossiya,' 'Moskovskaya pravda,' 'Leninskoye znamya,' 'Selskaya zhizn'"[16] – anything not on the list could not appear.